Abstract

Two-hundred and thirty-five cases of epithelial ovarian carcinoma were studied with a newly devised scoring system for endometriosis consisting of both clinical and histopathologic findings, in order to evaluate the association with endometriosis. Fifty cases (21.3%) of all carcinomas evaluated were judged to be associated with endometriosis. The patients with endometriosis were younger and their clinical stage was significantly earlier than those without endometriosis. The predominant histologic subtype was clear cell carcinoma and the histologic grade was mostly 1 or 2 in the tumors with endometriosis. No prognostic difference was noted between the cases associated with endometriosis and those without endometriosis in stage 1 and 2 disease. In conclusion, the actual frequency of the association of endometriosis with ovarian carcinoma is higher than supposed and almost half of clear cell carcinomas are definitely related to endometriosis, and the cases of ovarian carcinoma associated with endometriosis occur in younger patients, and are of earlier stage and lower histologic grade, but the association of endometriosis does not seem to otherwise influence prognosis.